Thirty years ago, this was everyone's (first world) problem: unless a picture was issued by Warner, RCA/Columbia, Paramount or CBS/Fox, the best one could usu. expect was a shoddy VHS edition cheaply recorded at EP. Unless a flick was shot in the Academy ratio, its original AR was seldom preserved ("Manhattan" was a rare exception)...

...Many big studio productions and successful independent movies ("Cuckoo's Nest," "Capricorn One") were routinely licensed by Goodtimes or Republic, whose editions were routinely crummy. Thousands of great flicks (such as Altman's best pictures) were never commercially available via videocassette. Anyhow, what did you watch?

I watched "Animas Trujano" starring Toshiro Mifune, it's actually pretty cool, sad thing that the pan and scan where so bad that sometimes the shots didn't had anything on them, but overall an amazing and very emotional movie, still need to make my mind about it, but overall it's a quality work

I'm actually fascinated with the amazing dubbing of the film that only involved Mifune, they teached him how to make the fonetics sound of their lines so it could sound more realistic, and it totally does, he didn't even know a single word in spanish, which is amazing.

Oh, and I also watched Mikio Naruse's When a Woman ascend the stairs, however, I can't say I understood the events of the film.

"Animas" really is terrific; I saw it in the late '90s on a (now defunct) cable channel and found it terribly poignant. Though their performances are disparate, Mifune's vocal assay and dubbing there are conformable to Lancaster's in "The Leopard."

Like so many postware Japanese flicks (and esp. those penned by Kikushima) "When a Woman Ascends the Stairs" is primarily concerned with the necessities of endurance and sacrifice, and the asperities commonly afflicting independent women of that period.

Naruse's work thematically anticipates some of the best features by Oshima and Imamura, though he was a more formal and graceful filmmaker. If you liked "Stairs," see his "Floating Clouds," certainly the most famous and probably best of his collaborations with Hideko Takamine.

This is a pinch pricey, but both pics of this double feature are solid: https://www.ebay.com/itm/ANIMAS-TRUJANO-ASI-ERA-PANCHO-VILLA-2DVD-s-REGION-CODE-4-1-MIFUNE-ARMENDARIZ/352736672091

Further, I borrowed Criterion's superlative edition of "Woman Ascends" from a library in the aughts; it's also worth a spin: https://www.criterion.com/films/816-when-a-woman-ascends-the-stairs

Uh, I would love to grab that DVD, sadly that eBay listing doesn't ship to my area but I'll keep an eye out for it

Oh wait, I just bought both

Yo... Add me on Discord (iyw), I'm pretty lonely ^^

You should join the Pennys club discord server if you're not already in it. It's basically a neocities discord server. : https://discord.gg/hVZB5QM

Keep fishing whenever you can, and relax; someone's always waiting for someone like you. For which curricula are you registered?

I'm registered to microeconomics II, macroeconomics I, sociology, statistics II, demography, math III and economic history of Mexico.